Hmm... I took a second look at the stats, and it seems as though mumpsimus is the only player with a notably higher level of activity. The majority of other players actually still doesn't seem to be all that much better than what they were before the change to matchmaking

Note on the score activity. Since alpha 12.x we have the ghost players (that are well done so far) and almost every time - aside little coincidences - a player plays against a ghost.

So if before there were 300 multiplayer matches, each requiring 2 active deployments (or so), now with the same number of deployments the game gets 600 multiplayer matches.

And that is not bad, since everyone, anytime, even with two days of difference, can compete (if the active player and the ghost are within 400 score points). For this I say it is well done. In particular the ghost choice seems not dumb, or better, seems that the ghost uses the latest active deployment of its related player that resulted in a score within 400 points from the player deploying. That is neat.

So using a test account after having reinstalled gladiabots I can say that to reach 1100 one has to try a little. The next wall is 1300, then 1500. Passing 1500 requires finally a bit if effort. The elo works well.

I wonder how many hit 1500 and quit.I remember a self proclaimed great player that copied simple bot of pew, reached 1700 without even understanding why and then said "this game sucks". Lol (eril or something like that was the name)

So somehow the game was spammed around (reddit or social networks?) then people - even with the new awesome matchmaking where people don't have to wait much anymore, plus the awesome ai editor and so on - behaved like before. I guess the game should point to keep the few that love it, because those few that love it are not that common.

Alpha 12 is amazingly better than the one before for me, in terms of fun that I can extract every half an hour. But the game is still not trivial, requires effort and you know, idle games are the games that makes the most as many people don't want to think.

I remember my colleagues working in IT "I don't want to think much, I want to relax". And I also have to say that the game is super addictive, so if one plays gladiabots without discipline, he does less of all the rest (reading, writing, whatever active activity).

Ok, are multiple ghosts created for each player? If so, why? Why not to have single player's ghost always updated with latest deployment. Also to prevent inflation the ghost's score should never be replaced with player's current score.

I am running (very slowly) a simulation. Even without ghosts (but with active players) inflation is unavoidable.

Actually it is not inflation (inflation is when more points are pumped in the system, ghosts allow that), it is more like "the rich get richer".

I am using for starters 20 players starting with an score of 1000, while the matches are decided by their defined "true strength" having at least one player dominating all the others (although not by a large margin). I am running iterations until the top score stabilizes. So far, already with as little as 20 players, the top player reached elo 4000.

So forget fixing about inflation, that won't be solved (unless - as in economy, scores are much like a sort of hard won currency - "redistributing taxes" are introduced). Focus about distances between scores that are and were still valid.

Before ghosts the point was that players stopped playing (that will be another simulation to do) and so they hold points outside the system and that was a sort of little tax. With ghosts this is not possible at least yet, and I wouldn't even call it a problem.

Why is it not a problem? because people wants to be fixed on the metric "highest absolute value" instead of "biggest distance between players". In my view this means that people try to force the system to follow a poor metric because they did not understand (n1) how the system work. (the system works with distances rather than absolute values)

n1: I am the first to say that I need to learn a lot of nuances about the system - the system is made by scores and matchmaking - but the average understanding of it in my view is dismal.

Ok no one helped me and mcompany to keep track of the player stats. This is something that we will regret as historical records are hugely important to make future decisions. /shrugs

Anyway now that there are ghost, thanks to the kind db export from gfx (for everyone, there is a link in the unavoidable tournament meta) I just checked something about net flow of points. The same I did in the past for the flow of points between score ranges (pre ghosts). See here: http://pier4r.wikidot.com/pierworks:art ... lo-inights